Chapter 270: Through the wall
"Third circle?" Lance asked, shocked by what she said. He turned to look at her, "you mean I would get the sword and get into the third circle?" he asked.
She nodded slowly, "you might even get close to the circle, but you know it’s impossible to break into the fourth circle that easily," she said.
"Yes, I know. Enlightenment is needed for the sake of entering the fourth circle, just adding a new layer in the third circle is not enough," Lance said.
The carriage stormed through the town extremely fast, and after half an hour, they finally arrived at the church.
It was a massive building made of white marble, and at the tip of its long arcs were golden six-sided stars.
As Lance came down from the carriage, he looked at the church. He hadn’t been here in a long while. As they walked into the compound, he saw young men and women dressed in all white, walking around, talking to themselves, and more.
They all stopped to greet the lady and her followers as they walked past. They bowed their heads low and said nothing else.
Lance and the lady walked to the massive door of the church, she pushed it and walked in. The first thing that he saw was the pews of wooden chairs that could fit more than a thousand people at a time.
Their footsteps echoed as they stepped on the marble floor. Clack, clack.
"I don’t recall there ever being a time where the church was this empty," Lance said.
"The church stopped taking people for a while. We are currently working with the magic council and creating more ways to protect Vermilion.
We do not want a repeat of what happened before to happen again," she explained.
"I see, that makes sense," he replied.
They finally made it to the altar, and then she took a turn to a door at the side of the altar. When she opened the door, the two figures with her stopped at the door. They bowed to her and Lance and then walked away.
"We continue onward on our own," she said. The door closed behind them and the hallway lit up, crystals on either side of the wall.
She led the way and started walking. There were many doors on either side, and Lance could swear that he heard sounds coming from each of them, but she acted like it was nothing and kept walking, until finally they arrived at their destination, the door at the very end of the hallway. It was made of heavy metal.
Lance could tell from one look that no matter how much he attacked this door, he would not be able to dent it even slightly.
She placed her hands on the door and channeled some mana through her hands. It entered the door and spread, a magical formation lit up immediately and the sounds of cogs and locks started coming from behind it.
A few seconds later, the door finally opened and immediately, Lance was hit with a massive amount of mana, so much that he was forced to step back.
"What the hell?" he asked.
"This is a mana zone, this entire church was built on a mana vein," she said.
"A mana vein?" he asked, shocked. A mana vein was a mana formation connected to the core of the world. When a mage or battle mage practices magic inside a mana vein, their growth is exponentially increased.
There are many uses for mana veins, so much that it would take days to get into it, but that potent mana also had its extreme downsides.
Lance took a deep breath and walked in, he felt the mana press against his skin. It was extremely hard to walk through, but he kept his head up.
[...]
The stinger of the scorpion came down fast. Riven kicked the ground and dodged the attack, then attacked with a flame blast.
The explosion destroyed the tip of the tail. This time he had finally got it, he had been bombarding the stinger with attack after attack, until now it finally cracked.
"The tail is gone, take it down!" Riven yelled.
Noel and Jack immediately took that as their opportunity. They launched at the scorpion. Jack compressed his mana into his claws until it could cut through metal.
The scorpion attacked with its pincer. Jack dodged by spinning his body, and with a powerful slash, he cut through the joint. He couldn’t cut the entire pincer off, but he managed to stop it from attacking again, and then went for the body.
Noel moved the same way, his lightning ripped through the air with ease and blasted the pincer back, cracking it.
The two of them attacked the head in quick successions that confused the scorpion. Then Silva went for the finishing blow, a flame blast right to the head.
The explosion knocked it back, Noel rushed forward, thrust his sword right through the gap, and then channeled lightning through the sword, destroying it from the inside.
The undead scorpion collapsed to the ground dead. Riven walked to it and took the crystal, before looking ahead.
"Let’s go," he said. They started running down the floor, hoping that they would find where Sofia was dragged to.
"This is probably around the tenth floor, bro. Are you sure we can handle what’s here? That scorpion is one of the first," Noel said.
"It doesn’t matter what’s down here, we keep going until we save Sofia. We can’t lose her, and there is no time for us to call anyone.
We don’t even have a way to get back to the top floor unless we find the stairs, and with all the time that would take, she might be hurt," he explained.
"I hear something," Jack suddenly said. They all stopped immediately and started looking around.
"What is it?" Riven asked.
Jack’s ears twitched a bit, he turned and looked at the wall.
"Move back, it’s coming through the wall!" he yelled and leaped out of the way.